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The Daily Chronicle was founded in 1872. Purchased by Edward Lloyd for £30,000 in 1876, it achieved a high reputation under the editorship of Henry Massingham and Robert Donald, who took charge in 1904. Owned by the Cadbury family, with Laurence Cadbury as chairman,[2] the News Chronicle was formed by the merger of the Daily News and the Daily Chronicle on 2 June 1930,[3] with Walter Layton appointed as editorial director.[2]

With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the paper took an anti-Franco stance and sent two correspondents to Spain in 1936-37: Arthur Koestler (to Málaga)[4] and, later, Geoffrey Cox[4] (to Madrid). The paper's editorial staff took an active part in campaigning for the release of Koestler, who was captured by Franco's forces at the fall of Málaga and was in imminent danger of being executed.[5]

Following Koestler's release, the paper sent him to Mandatory Palestine, then convulsed by the Arab revolt. In a series of articles in the paper, Koestler urged adoption of the Peel Commission's recommendation for partition of Palestine, as "the only practical way of ending the bloodshed". In his autobiography Koestler notes that en route to Palestine he had stopped in Athens and had clandestine meetings with Communists and Liberals opposing the then Metaxas dictatorship, but the News Chronicle refused to publish his resulting strongly worded anti-Metaxas articles.[6]

In 1956, the News Chronicle opposed the UK's military support of Israel in invading the Suez canal zone, a decision which cost it circulation. According to Geoffrey Goodman, a journalist on the newspaper at the time, it was "one of British journalism's prime casualties of the Suez crisis".[7]

On 17 October 1960, the News Chronicle "finally folded, inappropriately, into the grip"[7] of the right-wing Daily Mail despite having a circulation of over a million.[1][3] The News Chronicle's editorial position was considered at the time to be in broad support of the British Liberal Party, which was in marked contrast to that of the right-wingDaily Mail. As part of the same takeover, the London evening paper The Star was incorporated into the Evening News.